The document proposes creating a working group within Pistoia to standardize terminology and data formats. The working group would first create a list of existing standards and define their coverage. It would then gather user requirements from Pistoia members and use these to prioritize areas for standardization. The working group would perform a gap analysis to anchor requirements to standards and develop criteria to evaluate and drive the development of standards.

1. PM 4: The Standards Landscape – Status, gaps, redundancies. What needs to be done?
David Brown
Ingrid Schmid
Jesus del Valle
Parthiban Srinivasan
Michael Braxenthaler
Todd Vision
Susanna Sansone
Vision: Pistoia’s rubberstamped standards
- endorsed by Pistoia’s members,
- used by Pistoia’s members internally, and
- to influence adoption by vendors/suppliers
How to implement this?
- Create a Pistoia WG (extending the scope of VSI?), with all interested parties
What are the first steps/tasks for this WG?

2. 1. Contribute to the creation/maintenance of a list of standards
- What is out there: terminologies, file format, minimal requirements
- Define their coverage
2. Gather concrete user requirements
- Collect ‘case studies’, real needs from the diverse Pistoia’s members
- Use them to drive priority areas,
=> e.g. this (break out) group’s members have already expressed an interest in
contributing to the VSI synonyms dictionary (see Harland et al paper, DDT)
3. Anchor the requirements to standards
- Gap analysis, area of overlaps and coverage etc….
4. Develop criteria to evaluate standards and drive their developments
- Metrics
- Architecture criteria: versioning, backward compatibility,
extendibility, coverage etc…
- General criteria: size of the community, it stability, structure and funds, tool
support, involvement of regulators (mainly in clinical but not/less in biological
domains), documentation, ease of adoption etc…
- Develop and assign KPIs
- Manifesto
- Agile development of standards, including best practices for the development,
governance, rules of engagements etc.